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Saturday, June 5, 2010

Saturday, June 5, 2010

The best man at Julian and Janny's wedding decided that he wanted to surprise them with a cake. It was supposed to have "congratulations" written on it in both English and Thai since the bride was from Thailand.

Unfortunately, however, somewhere along the line someone's computer (probably a pc*) didn't recognize the Thai font (surprise, surprise), and so changed the font to...

waaait for it...

You guessed it! Gibberish!

(Or more precisely, gibberish that means nothing to anyone other that a few computer programmers who will no doubt point out my immense stupidity and poor lineage in the comment section.)

What gets me is that not only did the guy who printed it out not notice, but the hugely talented decorator didn't question it, either! For some reason I'm picturing a perfectly groomed English guy in a starched jacket and cummerbund saying, "Hm, yes, well. This is a tad awkward. But tally ho! Onward! What what! Good night, Westley! Good work! Sleep well! I'll most likely kill you in the morning!"

Wait, no. That's the Dread Pirate Roberts. Anyway.

Thanks to Julian and Janny

*Actually, it was a Commodore 64

Update: Apparently the font is not gibberish. It's called Mojibake or "an unintelligible sequence of characters." So, ya know. Gibberish. Only not gibberish. Everybody clear? Good good...

First of all, most modern PCs have foreign font packs installed (I'm talking Windows 7 here). Second of all that isn't Wingdings. They're just the closest ASCII representation of Thai characters. I enjoy Cakewrecks as much as the next person but don't go around bashing things because out of plain ignorance or you will lose a reader.

Gotta say, I think this is more of the cake orderers error than the cake maker. If that's what he/she/they signed off on, then I think the decorator actually did a great job! And by the way, that's Klingon, not wingdings...

Umm. Whoops. Apparently we found a NEW and GLORIOUS thing that is wrong with our format. I don't know what happened but I'm blaming Google.

Second...

Julian, the submitter, told me that the font was Wingdings and so I went with it. I have now changed it to gibberish which I don't believe is a font and I'm sure is still wrong.

Finally...

Avenphire,

Please accept my deepest apologies that I offended you so terribly with my lack of knowledge and my blatant disregard for the true nature of the font in question. My Father was a hamster and my mother smelled of elderberries.

I think what happened is the customer sent the email in ISO-8859-11 (Thai) encoding and the bakery's software read it as ISO-8859-1 (Western). Working backwards, that would give ขอให้โใชคดี. Although Google doesn't quite know how to translate that, so I might have messed up my math. Or the baker misspelled the nonsense.

"As...you...wiiiiissssshhhh" hehehehehe. I want to know who comes up with these fonts and then find someone besides a computer programmer who can read them. I kind of think that the people printing and writing out the font, have never seen the Thai language so they just assumed that it was like hieroglyphics or something.

First off, if you start a sentence with "hate to be a stickler" or "not to nitpick" --you are lying. You are a wing ding. The end. Jen- Your parenthetical statement made me laugh the hardest. I don't ever comment, so I didn't realize that people "reluctantly" (or happily, I guess) point out mistakes most of us don't care about.Not to be bossy, but enjoy the cakes or step off, people! John- I like the smell of elderberries. But the hamster? Inconceivable!

Come on... when you are doing something for a major event, such as a WEDDING, would it kill ya to double-check things?! I would never put something of another language onto a cake unless I have checked from several sources that it says the very same thing! LOL... not to mention the fact that anyone with common sense should have seen that the "Thai" writing looked more like alien writing from a sci-fi movie! '

If I start a sentence with "Not to be bossy" -- I am lying because I DO mean to be bossy when I say c'mon, settle down and have fun! Save yer outrage for sites that aren't nearly as clever, witty, and just plain awesome as this one.

For those that are curious, the Thai text, when de-scrambled, reads "ขอให้โชคดี" which Google translates as "Good luck."

It's Thai text that's been encoded as TIS-620 and then read back as either ISO-8859-1 or Windows-1252. Most likely it was an email sent by a user whose computer is set to Thai to a user whose computer is set to English, and one of them us using a dodgy email client (which either didn't send or didn't recognise the charset header).

I'd just like to note that whoever actually wrote that on the cake did a decent job of making all the random symbols legible - some of them can be hard to tell apart, but because they did a decent job of it, it was easier to figure out what all the characters were, which made it easier to run it backwards through the scrambler.

*cough* The character in The Princess Bride is actually Westley, not Wesley. *tsk, tsk*I thought for sure such great Princess Bride fans would know that.

...or maybe it is a sore spot with me since my son's name is Wesley and I am always having people ask me in all seriousness if I named him after "Wesley in the Princess Bride". ;)

Other than that, the scripting is very pretty and the sentiment is lovely. It sure would have been nice, however, if the baker had verified what it should have said. It seems like anyone that has tried to type up half of a term paper at home, then the other half at school would be very familiar with that gibberish.

....but if the decorator had thought of that we wouldn't be having this laugh. :)

Holy guacamole! When I went to look wistfully at yesterday's post to fortify myself until Sunday Sweets, what a delightful surprise! A Saturday post! (The whole thing, nothing cut off.) And even better, hilarious replies to the comments about John's "immense stupidity and poor lineage" - bonus! John, you really know this crowd to anticipate those comments. Yay for CW!

PCs are the computers of the people, and there is nothing wrong with them that skipping porn sites and having decent virus protection won't protect. Fecking computer elitists. Other than that, hilarious!

No offense, but ...(Someone's about to say something offensive. "No offense, but you're a jerk, you smell bad, and your mother dresses you funny.")

This morning I read a story about a politician in Arizona who started a statement with, "I'm not a racist, but ..." and then, of course, said some unbelievably racist things, which I have no intention of repeating here.

When Ford and AT&T (orignally Bell Telephone company) *first came out* they were the only show going. Now we have a choice of phones and autos. (and Ford F150 is still a top selling auto, and what is the elitist iPhone w/out AT&T?)

It is now like 25 years after personal computers 'came out' and PCs still have more than 85-90% ownership rate over Mac. And there's nothing fundamentally different between today's Mac and PC except compatibility and Price. (I own a PC, and I am trained on a Mac).

Note to self:Do not send in design instructions by e-mail. Print out template and bring it in.

I'm not letting the decorator all the way off the hook. I don't speak or read Thai, but I know what written Thai looks like well enough to know that what ended up on the cake can't be Thai. And if it was a writing system I don't recongize instantly, like Armenian or Amharic, I could at least look it up to see if I was using the right alphabet.

One suggestion: I find it confusing when you change your original post without letting us know. I start reading the comments and nothing matches what people are commenting on. I rather like the convention of striking through the original text and putting the correction next to it. It's easier to follow, and feels more honest. Just MHO.

Um.... actually, in defense of the baker, if he DID get that order by email, it's probably not his fault..

Had I been the baker, I really wouldn't have known the difference, since I've not ever been to Thailand, and have NO idea what their alphabet looks like.

Maybe we ought to poke some tsk-ing towards the orderer, who probably should have presented himself at the baker's place of business with the message WRITTEN OUT? But of course, we all know that doing so doesn't always guarantee that the cake turns out as conceived.

really? Reeeeaaally? In a world where instructions get frosted onto expensive (underneat that) cakes (all the way across) for festive and PHOTOGRAPHED occasions (Happy Birthday Down Here) you are expecting enough professionalism and initiative to actually go back to the computer and verify that the gibberish is what the customer intended to have on the cake???GUFFAW! CWs are eternal!

Yay, an unexpected Saturday post, with gibberish, Monty Python and the Princess Bride. Oh, and a swipe at PCs, thank you very much :)

I suggest if you are offended by today's post, you drink a mai tai or two and then read it again. Or if you are descended from hamsters and elderberry-perfumed parents, drink some elderberry wine in a very small glass.

Also, the real Thai typeface is very pretty. Too bad I can't read it, or I'd love to have it on my birthday cake. What a potential for wrecks: Thai phrase of Happy Birthday, with English translation below. I can see the carnage now.

What IS IT with people getting SO offended about PC vs. Mac?? It's a computer! Who the heck CARES if someone likes Mac or PC better, or makes jokes about one or the other??? If you're going to get offended about something, it should at least be because someone's attacking your personal character or something, NOT your choice of computer. Geez!

That is the saddest wreck I've seen thusfar, because it is such a BEAUTIFUL CAKE! Such a shame. And honestly, you have the nitpickin'est bunch of readers! Why are all these people constantly on your case about silly things (ie. wingdings vs. mojibake and a missing s)?!? This is supposed to be FUN!!! I love your website; you make me laugh daily, and I think everyone should just lighten up!

I couldn't agree with Avenphire more. I hate reading personal comments in blog posts which have nothing to do with the post in question. All computers, Macs and PC's have language packs installed., it's the bakers fault; not a computers. Don't post your personal feelings on a blog which likely has more PC users than Mac users.

Jen and John (the hubby of Jen), I read daily, never comment, but today's comments inspired me. People, people....really? We're going to fight PC vs Mac on a CAKEWRECKS blog? Why do we care if it's wingdings, mojibake or gibberish? The point is that it is NOT Thai! Get a life, look through the posts, laugh and lighten up. I "heart" cakewrecks!

@Anonymous at 1:45... ROFLMAO!!! Love it. (I'm not siding with any one platform: I am both Mac & PC, which I suppose makes me just confused . I'm just appreciating a good heckle!).

John... I think your parentage was just fine, given you're such a good sport about all our posts. Or maybe your mother uses those elderberries to make you delicious and mood-mellowing mead?

As for the beautifully-decorated cake, I think the lesson is that if you're sending in wording in a foreign language, send it as a .pdf attachment or .jpg. That way, it doesn't matter what fonts the receiving computer uses to display the ASCII codes! And thanks to the techies here for explaining why such horrors can happen.

I happen to recognize Thai (can't read it, but sure can admire it-- IMO it and Arabic are probably the two most beautiful writing, if you rule out calligraphy). And to out-picky all the humourless picky types, that font isn't gibberish or wingdings! All those characters are present even in your standard font sets. Looks to me like the cents symbol, and letters with French, German and Spanish accents. Plus two symbols I don't know but are probably of a similar nature (and, I'm sure, someone will tell me ;)

My name is Irving Tirdbergler and I am truly disappointed that you chose to besmirch the good name of Commodore 64. I have used that system for more than 20 years and I have been an avid reader of Cake Wrecks in Dos since the beginning. This was the final straw! Good Bye.

@Lexi - Yes, "all" computers in the US have European language packs installed. But not "all" computers have Asian language packs. Case in point, my dad's XP, one of "all" the computers in existence, that has no Asian language packs. That's why whenever I go to a Japanese site, it asks to install the Japanese font pack, which I can't do because I'm in a limited account on his computer. However, on this computer I have Asian font packs, so it's no problem. :p

On the subject of the cake, however, I love that they kept it in the notepad-looking font that you always see with screwed up coding. It's like they thought, "Hmm, I wonder if that's part of the meaning. Welp, might as well keep it!"

As a user of a language that doesn't always come in the default packs (Hebrew), I'd like to tell you that I had more tough spots with my Mac than with my PC where language is concerned. I've also heard several Linux horror stories from people who use it.

Jen, John (the husband of Jen) and every single commenter -- Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! My DH was showing me pictures of cakes on his computer. I remembered this site, found it to show him, and was instantly entranced! The cake is beautiful. Princess Bride refs are always welcome and the humor or lack thereof of the comments made my day.

rofl >.< as already said, it isn't wingdings. and it is a pretty cake otherwise. but it was still pretty freakin' funny. and I love the Princess Bride reference at the end. Just saw it today for the 50th time XD... but yesh... my name is inigo montoya *is slapped*

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